Tuesday, October 22, 2013

From Internationalization of Businesses to Economics of Countries :-)

Well, the day began with a mail waiting from Luis S., waiting in my inbox, providing us with our group feedback, so already a happy note to begin my day.

It was a double session of Talent Management today with Lincoln Electric case - the classic example of a company with completely counter-intuitive yet successful implementation of piece-rate system, paying high compensation in a high cost location, and yet sustaining its market leadership for more than 100 years now. This case in particular was about discussion on whether Lincoln should go to China with same HR practices. Along the discussion, Prof. Monika provided us with some survey data as well - to provide trends on behavioral and aspirational influences in U.S. and China, the differences in them and similarities in them.

While it was an interesting discussion today, what I liked the most about this class was that Prof. Monika was not only moderating the discussion based on inputs by people, she was actually helping people by reading into their comments and helping them state their case clearly.

Our group did pretty much nothing as part of group work today, as it is a little early in the term anyways and then it was time for our first session of the Core Plus elective class.
Basically, this is an elective offered during the core period itself. While the choices included Strategy, Finance, and Management Control as other options [both in English and Spanish], I along with 56 others [yes, this class is full] chose 'Country Economic Analysis' - firstly because the cases and countries covered in this class are interesting to know about and secondly because the professors for Economics are really really good. Prof. Gonzalo, Prof. Gayle Allard and Prof. Patricia Gabaldon, each with an expertise in economics of different regions of the world. Not to mention, my decision like many others was also biased by the fact that we had already taken Managerial Economics class with Prof. Gonzalo and we all liked that class and Gonzalo's teaching very much.

Anyways, today's opening session was by Prof. Gonzalo where he discussed where the world is today, the history of economic development, the future trends in demographics [he doesn't really advocate economic forecasts, so only forecasts we saw were the demographic forecasts, which are pretty much accurate due to data availability] and how different countries and their economies have evolved and are are currently placed.

He used references from Malthus to Rosling to the recently published report [just ten days ago] by world bank on GNI and GNI-PPP figures of various nations.

As usual, a lot of ground was covered in this class, even though this was the first session. We also got to know the overall syllabus, what countries we will cover in details, what are the grading criteria and other logistics stuff.

Anyways, by the end of this class, Investment Analysis grade was already out and I am really happy about this one.

Spent the rest of today reading for the first Marketing Strategy class by Erik tomorrow, and doing the Financial Forecast simulation as part of online exercise that Carlos has assigned us. This exercise was fun as it helped me revise the concepts of both financial accounting and investment analysis together in same exercise.

Need to apply to one more company today before I call it a day, and needless to say, it was a good day for me today :-)

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